Biography

German actor and dramatist who became an intense personal force in the German artistic world on the eve of World War I.

A direct forebear of the modern Theatre of the Absurd, Wedekind employed episodic scenes, fragmented dialogue, distortion, and caricature in his dramas, which formed the transition from the realism of his age to the Expressionism of the following generation.

He was successively an advertising manager, the secretary of a circus, a journalist for the satirical weekly magazine, a cabaret performer, and the producer of his own plays. The electric quality of his personality has been attested by his contemporaries.

At the age of 34, after serving a nine-month prison sentence for "lèse-majesté" Wedekind became a dramaturg.

Wedekind’s characteristic theme in his dramas was the antagonism of the elemental force of sex to the philistinism of society. In 1891 the publication of his tragedy Frühlings Erwachen (The Awakening of Spring, also published as Spring Awakening) created a scandal. It concerns sexuality and puberty among some young German students. In 2006, it was adapted into a successful Broadway musical, Spring Awakening.